Harpsichord Concerto

By the early 20th century, the harpsichord was a rarity in the concert hall; having enjoyed a central role during the 18th-century Baroque era, it had long since been superseded by the piano. The instrument was then revived by the Polish player Wanda Landowska, who asked composers to write new works for her. Falla responded with his radically original Concerto for harpsichord and five instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, violin and cello). He completed this in 1926, and Landowska gave the premiere that year in Barcelona. Much of Falla’s earlier music had explored a kind of late-Romantic Spanish impressionism. By now, however, he had become drawn to the musical and religious values of Spain’s 16th-century “Golden Age”. The Concerto is a neo-classical work, but of a kind at odds with the stylised elegance of contemporary musical fashion. Falla’s brand of neo-classicism favoured an austere asceticism, connecting with similar qualities in Spanish Catholic tradition. Landowska performed on a harpsichord adapted from a Pleyel grand piano, and its tone was very loud. Falla exploited this aspect in the second of the Concerto’s three movements, where the music suggests the grandeur of a slow religious procession; at the end is the inscription “A. Do. MCMXXVI—In festo Corporis Christi” (“AD 1926—On the Feast of Corpus Christi”). The two lively outer movements are based on phrases from a Castilian folksong, and their style pays tribute to Domenico Scarlatti, the Italian-born composer and harpsichordist who settled in Spain in the 18th century.